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Hulu Owners Abruptly Call Off Sale – So What Went Wrong?

Deadline says:

Today News Corporation, Providence Equity Partners, The Walt Disney Company, and the Hulu senior management team issued a joint statement that it was terminating the sale of Hulu. ”We look forward to working together to continue mapping out its path to even greater success.” (Full statement below.) So what went wrong? A lot of things. But people close to the process tell me that one problem was particularly difficult to overcome: Comcast, Disney, and News Corp could never agree on the scope of the programming they were willing to offer someone buying Hulu. This was especially true for advertising supported VOD, the kind of service that Hulu offers now. Hulu simply wasn’t worth much if the sellers wouldn’t throw in exclusive rights to stream popular first-run shows. Sources tell me that Disney was more open to offering hit programming, and therefore to a Hulu sale, than News Corp was — even though News Corp’s digital chief Jon Miller was the point person in wranglin...